Name: Surviving A Tech Breakup: How to Navigate Changing Your CRM and Come Out Thriving
Uploaded: 2025-02-20T20:16:04.891Z
Duration: 52 min 24 s
Description: Surviving A Tech Breakup: How to Navigate Changing Your CRM and Come Out Thriving

Transcript for "Surviving A Tech Breakup: How to Navigate Changing Your CRM and Come Out Thriving": Well, hey, everybody. Welcome to the webinar today. We have folks jumping in, and we are super grateful to spend some time together. We would love to know where you're joining us from. So as you're coming in, as you're hearing my voice, go ahead and let us know in the chat. You can see the chat over on the right side of the screen. And so let us know where you're joining from today, maybe your name, your organization, and, the part of, the country, the world that you are joining us from. We're really glad to be all together. One of the nice things too, with this platform, is you can also share some gifts. So I'm gonna go ahead and find my, favorite webinar hello gift and share that in the chat. You're welcome to do that as well as we are jumping in there just so we can all kinda get to know each other. Stacy, hello. Welcome. Tricia, we're glad you're here. Lachey, welcome. We're gonna have a great forty five minutes, to an hour together. Hopefully, where you walk away with some really helpful tips on surviving a tech breakup, how to navigate changing your CRM and come out thriving. We know that that is, can be a big undertaking and that there's a lot, involved in that, so we're excited to kind of unpack that. And I'm saying we a lot because I'm here with some friends who are gonna be along for the ride today. And so we're gonna just kinda introduce ourselves. Myself, my name is Scott Holthouse. I am a team member here at Virtuous, in the marketing team. Before jumping on, I actually was a part of nonprofits for about fifteen plus years, mostly in the faith space, and worked a lot when it comes to, engaging donors, digital presence, driving generosity, online giving. And so really glad to be with you. I'm gonna toss it to Dana, my teammate, for an intro, and then she'll toss it to Heinrich, and we'll keep going. Hi. I'm Dana Cost. I am on the Virtuous team as well. I serve as one of our enterprise customer success managers here. I also come from the nonprofit space, spent about twelve years working across organizations of different sizes and sectors, international health care, historic preservation, and early childhood education. Through those systems, I've went through two or three platform changes, so hopefully can share some learnings, challenges, and all the fun stuff in between. Awesome. Alright. Thank you. Thank you very much. My name is Henrik. I am with the Microsoft Tech for Social Impact team. I've been working with business applications for the past, fifteen years, and, and, currently in that role with the, nonprofit industry team at Microsoft. Wonderful. Do you wanna just tell us a little bit about Tech for Social Impact and help people understand that a bit more? Yeah. Absolutely. Thanks, Scott. And first of all, thank you very much for inviting me to, join the conversation today. So, just to give a short introduction to Tech for Social Impact, we are an industry team at Microsoft, and we are a % focused on the nonprofit organizations worldwide. So, basically, we are in this world to help nonprofit, achieve more with, with, with whatever mission, mission they are working on. So, and we do that by providing a lot of assets to the nonprofit sector. So just to give you kind of a a a brief overview of the, of the business, the Tech for Social Impact business. Last fiscal year, we, had 4,700,000,000 in grants and discounted software and services for nonprofits. We are serving around 400,000 customers, on cloud software, today. Another part of kind of the giving culture in Microsoft is, also the the donation, by the employees of Microsoft and and the very generous, matching that Microsoft is, is providing to that. So basically, last year, $250,000,000 were, allocated from Microsoft to, nonprofits, around the world. Just a little on on kind of how we are organized and and and, to to kind of give you a context of, Tech for Social Impact. It is a quite interesting business model. We are a separate unit from, from the commercial business at Microsoft and we have kind of this social investment model. That means that every dollar earned in the industry goes back to the nonprofit sector. So this gives us an opportunity to invest in things like scaling, AI for good. As an example of this, we supported the Ukrainian government moving their infrastructure to the cloud and obviously out of Ukraine, only one week after the Russian invasion. So basically helping Ukraine to maintain those, basic public services. So there's a lot of areas around the world where we are kind of supporting organizations and governments in this case with, with software, driven within the Tech for Social Impact team. So just a short introduction to, to, to, Tech for Social Impact. Yeah. We so appreciate that. I'm really excited, to partner with you, Tech for Social Impact, and Microsoft. Now as you're here today, you're wondering, okay. What what are we talking about? Where are we going? We just wanna walk through, a few things. One, the the reality of CRM frustration, what that means for you, for your team, some of the pain points that causes, identifying when it's time to move on. So how do you know? Right? Like we already said, changing your CRM is not a small undertaking. So when do you know that it's time? And then how do you how do you navigate that transition successfully? How do you walk through that in a way, where you plan, you execute, and post, you thrive? So we'll look at that as well, thriving in a new CRM, and then we'll have some time for q and a. So speaking of q and a, you'll notice the tab above the chat where it says q and a. We'd love for you to submit any questions that you have as we go along. We'll either answer them during our presentation or save some time at the end, so please share your questions. And one of the really cool things too about this platform is we're able to engage not only in the chat. We wanna keep that going. Love to hear your comments as we keep going, but also in taking polls. And so we're actually gonna open up our first poll right now. And so you'll see a little pop up that says, a poll is open. Go to polls tab, and you'll see above poll with a little red dot. We'd love for you to click that and fill that out, and we'd love to know what CRM are you currently using. It's just so helpful for us to kinda have an idea of where you're at. What's awesome is a lot of the tools that we are and and info we're gonna share today, is really, again, just helpful regardless of that platform. But this gives us a good understanding and really helps us kinda guide next steps. So would love to hear that from you. We're gonna leave that poll open for the next minute or two as we kind of jump into, our first section, which is talking about the reality of CRM frustration. The reality of CRM frustration. So we're gonna start, and I'm gonna hand it to Dana to kick us off. Yeah. So, really, we're gonna dive in on is this where status quo for your team is right now? Do these pain points sound familiar? So with fundraising and donor engagement challenges, do you have limited donor insights? When your volunteer comes in, do you know if they're a board member or even a donor? If you're in personal outreach and missed opportunities, are you sending out a generic end of year appeal letter to one of your major donors asking them to contribute $25? Or do you have someone, who has the capacity to give, no, doesn't have the capacity to give a thousand dollar gift, but could be doing a $50 a month recurring gift? And for low donor retention, can you just not figure out why donors aren't coming back or continuing to support your cause? The other area that's a common pain point for, nonprofit users is operational inefficiencies and team frustrations. So this siloed data can cause bottlenecking around reporting, manual processing. I have to confess, I have stuffed a lot of receipt and acknowledgment and end of year tax statements at home, in front of my television. So very slow processes, lack of visibility, and dependence on your IT teams. Finally, another big pain point is technology and system limitation. So outdated user experience, poor integrations, rigid reporting. So really looking at like, are you working with the best in class technology partners? Is your system bubbling up, duplicates, or are you having to find ways to manually look over that information to make sure it's accurate? So so just just just one one addition to that, Dana. I think, one of the things that we see as a trend in in the market right now, specifically around the engagement with donors, is there is this generational shift in market. Basically meaning that, different audiences expect us to communicate with, the donors in a different way. That could be channels. That could be how we, message, our our donors, etcetera. So I think if we do not have that insight into kind of our donor base, it's very difficult for us to kind of reach them with the right message at the right time. And then then, also one one additional point, specifically on on kind of the the technology. We see a lot of nonprofits, working with legacy systems or systems that were probably implemented five, ten, fifteen years ago. And we live in a we are living in a very fast paced world. And this kind of gives a lot of limitations in terms of driving that agility that we need, to be make sure that we are efficient in, in in our donor outreach and how we work with our donors. So I think definitely the key points on on, on areas where where we see, challenges for a lot of, nonprofit organizations. Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. I think it's important to to kind of frame up why does this conversation, matter. Right? What about this conversation? Why why are we diving into this? I know we have a range of, of kind of places people are coming for, whether they're using larger enterprise solutions, whether they're still on a spreadsheet, whether they're looking to jump into, CRM. And so, Henrik, would love to toss it to you to just kinda talk through, some of the key business drivers and why this conversation really matters. Yeah. So so so, obviously, the the this this is an area that that we are having a lot of conversations with, with nonprofits around the world. And when we look at at the business drivers for for kind of changing a fundraising platform, it often comes down to to these five areas. If we if we look at a kind of a legacy system, which often have kind of rigid business processes. A system that doesn't support, how, how to be efficient, in in today's world with, with fundraising. And I think that's a challenge that a lot of, nonprofits are facing is that they're kind of locked by the system and not able to, react in real time. So so having those, those, legacy systems is a challenge for a lot of, nonprofits. The second one and also kind of a very key one here is that, also what Dana was alluding to on the previous slide, the ability to kind of do you know your donors? Do you have the ability to personalize, the messaging, for for for your donors? And, to the point that, we have different audiences, we have different, generational, donors from different generations, and they expect us to to, be relevant and talk to them in in their language. Also, poor reporting, is is, is is a big challenge. Being able to have that real time insight, being able to actually, take the right decisions at the right time, is, is a growing need for a lot of, nonprofits, ensuring that, they can, take the right decision, going forward. One thing that is not on the slide here, but but also, an area that that we hear a lot from nonprofits is really about, security. It is super important to have security, as a foundation for everything we do around, technology. When we look at the data, the nonprofit sector is the third most attacked sector by bad actors. And this really means that there are bad guys out there trying to to, to, ruin, our daily lives, stealing data, blocking systems, etcetera. And I think if we do not have security at the center of what we're doing, it's, it's it's, it it's a big risk for, for for everyone, here today. Absolutely. Yeah. And I I I think I just wanna speak to two from our end some of what we're seeing. The reality is giving is is so personal. Right? The the people who are connected to your organization that are deciding to support, it is fundamentally personal. But, historically, most nonprofits don't have a personal connection with every donor. Maybe if they fall in the major donor category, but doing this with all your donors at scale, is really something that hasn't happened and being able to personalize that experience. And the problem with that, ultimately, is that the world we're living in has has changed fundamentally. So the world that you are fundraising and communicating and connecting with your donors in, they're living in a world where personal connection is the norm. Right? My wife and I sat down last night to open Netflix, and we had a list of shows because we like being outdoors, and we like cooking, and we like, the occasional reality show. Like, we had a list of things directly personalized for us that we might like to enjoy. When you open up Amazon, there's a list of things that you probably want to buy your suggested next step because it's this personalized experience. It's not one size fits all, and it's two way behavior driven, meaning there are data signals. There are ways to for for organizations to listen and to understand so that you can best personalize and tailor the experience. And we know, like, when you're known and when you're listened to, it allows for that further connection. And so, really, to survive and to thrive in the hyper personalized digital first culture that we live in, nonprofits have to get better at being able, to do this at scale in order to drive, generosity. And so as we kind of keep going, we wanna jump into identifying when it's time to move on. So how do you know, when it's time, if it's time, and what that looks like? So, as we do that reminder, submit your questions, in the q and a tab. We're gonna continue to kinda answer those. But as we jump into this, I'm gonna toss it to Dana as we continue. Definitely. And so we're gonna lay out some steps here for you to really ask the questions of if it's time to move on to a new system, a new process. So understanding what staying costs. Time is money. So just because someone spends the time, for manual processes or are pulling reports in exporting them excel and manipulating them, what is that actually costing versus having a dashboard that bubbles up that information? What is it costing to not know why you're losing donors, and sort of the dependency on other teams and creating workarounds? The next area to reflect on is what can a better CRM give you? What do real time insights, multichannel opportunities, trusting the data that you see in your CRM? What is that value that you can provide? So when you think about if it's time to move on, you really should know the gaps and what tools are available to assist your team, and understand a good source of truth, and the value that has to speaking to your donors and engaging. And also, like, does the system have the opportunity to bubble up who you should be speaking to without you having to pull report some reports and reports? And then finally, it I'll harp on this one throughout the call. So don't don't worry about just this, a quick overview, but you have to be ready. It's more than just the system, it is the team itself. Making sure you're aligned with your stakeholders, understanding what your outcome is, like what does success look like if you change systems, What are you gonna have to change? And then also budgeting for that change. Sometimes solutions, you you're gonna spend more time doing a process that and that's where you need to account for your staff time. Maybe a little bit more in a CRM may solve and provide some more value. So so so I think one one one, one additional thing I want to to add to this is, when we look at at kind of the wasted time, of staff doing manual processes, etcetera, I mean, one thing is that it obviously has an impact and it drives a lot of inefficiencies in in that sense, both in terms of wasted time but also frustrations with, with employees. Given the fact that we see the sector has a a significant staff burnout but also kind of difficulties in fulfilling, filling open positions. I mean, if if we can bring the joy back working with a system that actually works on your terms and and not, feeling that you're wasting time on manual processes, that's also kind of a little hit hidden, cost that we benefit that that we not necessarily, focus too much on. But basically, having happy, people working at the organization is is, is a a key success metric. Yeah. Absolutely. We have a couple questions that, I think are really, really important to answer. One of which, we're actually gonna get to as we talk about kinda navigating the transition. Before we jump to these, we do have another poll. I mentioned we love our polls here. We love some engagement. We love kind of being able to all dive in together. So I'm gonna open that up right now. And the question that we're asking is where are you in the CRM transition process? Again, we have people kinda all over the board. And so what I can actually do too is share these results live as people are answering. And so, you know, whether you are not even thinking about it. Right? This is a a ways away. Maybe for you, it's coming up. We can kinda see it on the horizon. We know it might be time to start having the conversation. Maybe you're starting into that process right now and saying, okay. It's time. Let's do it. Maybe you're in it, and you're trying to make that decision. Where should we go? Or you've made the decision, and now you're in the process of dotting the i's, crossing the t's, making it happen, or you're like the where maybe a lot of the people voting wish they were, which is just finished the transition. And so we have one there, and so we're really glad that you have done that. But go ahead and answer that poll as we continue. We're gonna leave it up for a little bit longer. But what are the questions that we got that I would just love to hear, your all thoughts on before we continue, because it kinda leads into our next, section. But how do you ensure that your team or cross, or I'm sorry. I've spent twenty years in IT. My biggest challenge convincing the rest of our board it will be worth the work to move to a CRM. Offer this event to all, but no one is attending. Yeah. Stakeholder alignment is definitely tough. What you have to do is it's team communication, understanding what their pain points are, communicating what your team is experiencing, and then eventually determining the ROI. That's great. Yeah. I think helping to to draw, draw connections between the impact of not doing anything. Oftentimes, the status quo, let's kinda keep things the same, seems like a safe decision, but reality is sometimes that can be the worst decision to make, because it's gonna have the biggest kinda long term effects. So I think they're helping people understand that, can be really beneficial. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, let's keep continuing. We have some great questions coming in that we're gonna answer along the way, but let's actually dive into that, navigating the transition successfully. We'll keep this poll open for another, minute, but, yeah, go ahead and, we'll jump into this. Dana, take it away. Awesome. So here are the key steps in a transition process. Really and this goes to one of the questions I saw floating around the chat is gaining that buy in across your teams. So providing, like I said, the tangible evidence and presenting ROI. I spend x hours a week doing gift entry, or marketing spends x hours every month making sure that your email lists are up to date across the platforms. So addressing what resistance may exist. And then designating champions for a smooth adoption. I cannot emphasize that enough. You have to plan for internal project management and adoption. Make sure that the end users, were in on the trainings they should be on and also are not in the trainings they shouldn't be on. You'll you'll see eyes glaze over. They're not interested in participating if you have marketing people hearing about the gift entry process. So keep those items in mind. Also, what to look for in a new CRM, sort of what your what are you trying to do? If you've identified a strategic plan for your organization or for your fundraising team, what features do you need to have? If you're looking to build your recurring giving program, does your giving platform give you the opportunity to put a recurring gift prompt in if someone's giving a one time gift? Understanding promises versus actual capabilities in a system. Yes. You can get on a call and have a nice demo, but you guys need to ask questions on the demo. If you have processes or you're tracking information, don't make assumptions. That'll be a big friction point for your team if you've assumed the shiny new product does everything that you want it to do. And then also, Scott spoke about responsive fundraising. So ensuring that your CRM aligns with those principles, are you moving to technology that will actually allow you to engage with your audience in meaningful ways? Would have been helpful if I showed you guys that one. Then finally avoiding the pitfalls that derails CRM transitions. Ownership, those adoption champions are important, but knowing who on the team makes decisions, not just contract decisions of moving forward, but owning data, where that's gonna go, understanding systems are different. So don't underestimate data migration. Some changes might be structural. Some of them might just be, we're gonna call this this and that that. So understanding if there are nomenclature changes and then overlooking any training or user adoption. Making sure those team members aren't using legacy systems or manual workarounds to keep their outdated processes. Just to reiterate on that, because I think including the users in the process is is super key to kind of get to the right, output. And and don't underestimate the importance of of the trading, to come to the right user adoption. And and there will be a hyper care period where where where you would need to invest heavily into kind of making sure that everybody's on board and everybody understands the processes. But to to kind of get a successful, transition process, that is absolutely key to to double down on that user adoption and and training, and and everybody knows what to do and how to do things in the in the new solution. Yeah. Absolutely. Henrik, will you will you kinda take us on this journey as well around, navigating the transition successfully and specifically maybe talk about building a transition plan, what what that can look like, and and how people can, dive into that? Yeah. So so so I think, I I think one of the things that that, that, that we see as a common mistake when when looking into, transitions like this one is is that, some organizations have a view of this as an IT project. And what it's really not about is IT. It's it's really about to, have a solution that supports the business processes to optimize your fundraising, today and tomorrow and in the future. So so really making sure that that this is not just a a IT run project, but it's actually a a project run by the business. So and defining those clear, outcomes, and measure the impact is is also a key thing, for for for making sure that, that when we do kind of building this plan, why are you doing this? What is it that you're looking to achieve? What are the KPIs, that you're looking to improve? What are the both kind of hard call KPIs, but also kind of what are the more softer, areas where you would be, see an improvement. I previously on one of the previous sections, I talked about kind of the the burnout and and and satisfaction of working with a solution. These are also kind of things that has an impact. So I think when when you kind of define a clear outcome of what is it that you want to achieve, that also makes it easier for you to understand what are the steps we need to take to, to to get to that, outcome. So one of the one of the, one of the key things here is that, yeah, obviously a clear definition of fundraising processes, ensuring that you can serve different audiences with, with the solution. And as you can really view this not just as a system change, but it's actually an opportunity to redefine and modernize your fundraising efforts. So, make sure that you are zooming in on the outcomes of what you want to achieve, but also keep your minds and eyes open for opportunities that a solution can bring to you that you didn't know that you needed today. So any fundraising solution can fail. It doesn't really matter who are the vendor of the fundraising solution. If you don't have the proper plan and you don't have a plan to kind of make that a success in your organization. So it's not about the solution. It's about the the the the plan and execution and making sure that you're getting the right outcome measured on the relevant KPIs specifically for you. Yep. Yeah. I couldn't agree more. And the area that I wanna comment on, we're diving into the next slide, which is just understanding the data migration process. And so what does that look like when it comes to the data migration? Smooth transition is like planning and execution. So really looking at conducting a data audit. Before you start your migration, it's important to take a step back and look at your data and say, what do we need to keep? What needs to be cleaned? What should we migrate? Because not all data is worth carrying over to a new system. Yeah. It's essential to evaluate the needs, like active donor records, important engagement history, but can you clean up duplicates? Or, are if I haven't talked to a donor in twenty five years, do I need their information or can that be archived? Really reviewing there. Mapping data in systems is important as well. One of the more technical parts of a migration is saying this field wants to be here. The process ensures that you're putting the data in the right place based off of the right structure, which means that it'll be accessible and usable at the end. So often you wanna ask for a test database or two when you're working with your onboarding team. And then finally, setting up those integrations and automations. It's understanding how the system will work for you. CRM is an opportunity to streamline your processes. So getting back to what Henrik was saying before, you really wanna do a holistic view of your day to day activities and make sure that when you move to a new system that you're cleaning them up and not just carrying over bad habits. So making sure you'll connect external tools like payment processors, event management systems, and then having a system that has automation available. So bubbling up repetitive tasks, like donor acknowledgment emails or sending reports to the team, sort of cleaning up and mapping your data and setting up the integrations makes it a smooth process. Yeah. One thing too, I just wanna, before we jump into what does it look like to kinda thrive in your in your new system, I do wanna share in the chat here. We have a resource that we, our team has put together. We worked super long and hard on this. I think you heard in in Dana's bio, but she is, she has a ton of nonprofit experience, and a lot of our team, has a similar background as her. So they've been in the work doing a CRM conversion, living in, a database, driving, fundraising, you know, serving as a CDL or whatever the role might be. So we put together a CRM conversion playbook, that you can get for free where it really walks through this process and a lot of these points in a broader, term, gives some more kind of understandings and plans. So I just put that link there. Please grab that. It's just a resource for you and your team that we hope, is helpful, but I wanted to make sure to mention that, before we we kept going. Well, we're gonna talk about what does it look like, to thrive in your new system. I just wanna acknowledge. I know a lot again goes into the CRM conversion, and so we're not, by no means do we think we're answering every single thing here, but we're hoping that you could take some of these takeaways to kinda help. As we saw on the poll, we have a lot of people in the midst of it, thinking about it, preparing for it. So we wanna really make sure, that this is helpful for for you. But we're gonna jump into thriving in your new system. Dana, do you wanna kinda walk us through, some of these steps? And then obviously hearing from Heinrich along the way, we'd love that. Yeah. Absolutely. And this is what we all came here for. We want to see what success looks like at the end. So post transition, making sure that you're seeing, the changes that you wanted. If if not, you have to dig in. It's likely a change management issue that you're having with your team. And so understanding if they didn't change their processes, maybe that's why your system is not set up for success. Then empowering your team to maximize. I think this goes to one of the questions that we saw in the chat. It's easy to fall back into old habits. So making sure the team knows that they're where they're logging in, they're not going to legacy systems, for manual workaround. And you do this by asking for feedback, making sure you have feedback loops in place so they can share what's working, what's not, where they as an individuals or the team across the board needs further guidance on adopting the system. And then finally, measuring that ROI. Henrik spoke a lot about the setting KPIs for what's important to your organization, whether that's tracking dollars associated with gifts across giving tiers, whether it's email engagement metrics, but setting those KPIs so you actually know that you're growing. And team adoption, you're you should be checking things like, are they logging in? Are they completing tasks? If they're major donors, are they adding notes to the major gift offices? Are they adding notes to the donor records? And then finally using that those data driven insights, making sure that donors are engaging in the way that you thought. Are you comparing your your segments and your channels? Does direct mail or your online pages drive more activity? So so I just a few things I would like to add here. You you mentioned it, Dana, but the feedback loop from from the users is absolutely, critical, because there will likely be changes. There will likely be an ongoing kind of adjustment, of the solution to make sure that it's optimized for for for, yeah, for each individual organization. But I think besides having those hardcore, KPI KPI measurements, I mean, I would definitely, look into things like you you mentioned it as well, but adoption. Right? Are the are the fundraisers actually using the platform? But also, measuring satisfaction and ask the question, are you satisfied? And if not, what what should be improved? And often, it's it's a matter of of training, and understanding, how to to to use a new solution. But also, I think one one interesting thing that that definitely would be, an interesting area to to measure was to pick out, specific tasks that you do today in your current solution and, kind of measure what is the internal time spent on a specific task with the current solution and once you migrate to the new solution. Because that's time is money, and and sometimes we are we're kind of looking into, okay, is is donation going up? Do we add new donors, etcetera? But also, are we able to actually maximize the time spent for fundraisers working in the solution? So so having those benchmarks really is is, is a way to kind of showcase the success, but also in ensuring that you're actually, made the right choice, of changing a solution. So that helps you really evaluate the success, in in the new solution. Yeah. I think green one. I think that's great. I think part of the part of the equation too when you're thinking about, okay, how do we move through this process, and what does it look like to thrive in a new system is sort of catching a vision for what's possible. Like we talked about, sometimes we could kinda be in the status quo, and it's like, well, this is kind of what we're in day to day. So sometimes you need your kinda eyes above the cloud to see what could be. And I know for us, we really believe the way forward's responsive fundraising. And so what does that mean? Well, a lot of nonprofits, some of you even listening to this, are handcuffed with impersonal fundraising systems. And so what do I mean by that? Well, some of what we talked about, silo teams and data, lack of data insights. You have manual processes. Some of you even today, you talked about or mentioned in the chat, hey. We're kinda still stuck in spreadsheets and manual work. And, you know, for many, donor follow-up and donor cultivation and, ultimately, growing that donor relationship, whether it's acquiring new donors, increasing the, donor lifetime value, whether it's building that relationship and engaging stronger. It's one to many. Right? So kind of a spray and pray approach or, one way, one way communication based on your timing. I won't name the organization, but, I my wife and I gave, and it was I think it was eight days until we heard anything in response, from a thank you, from a, hey. We got your gift. And it can be impersonal and disconnected from donor intent. And so when I say what we believe, the way forward is is responsive fundraising, what I what I mean is this, It's a better approach, and it's a way to, connect personally at scale and drive generosity. And, really, there's four movements to that. The first is to listen. So the more you listen, the more you begin to understand your donor, and really understand how each person wants to connect, with your cause, the better than you're able to understand them in a holistic way. And that moves then into being able to connect. And to be able to do it, in a way, again, that's deeply personal and meaningful for that person. When you're listening to their insights and understanding who they are, what they care about, how they came to know you, then you can really connect and have personal engagement the way it should be. Not just personalization, meaning we're gonna insert their first name, but knowing, you know, as an animal shelter that this is the type of animal they really care about. This is when they most recently adopted a pet. This is an event they came to. They want to be known, you know, as this and communicated with through text message and and all of that. But connecting with donors, in a responsive way that's contextual to who they are and collaborative in a two way approach. And when you do that, then you're able to suggest. Right? We talked about what Netflix and Amazon and Hulu and and name the the organization does, but you're able to suggest the right next step for that person. Maybe it's giving. Maybe it's giving more. Maybe it's volunteering. Maybe it's being an advocate for you, for your mission. You're able to suggest. And then finally, you can learn. You can use that information, and you continue this process. Right? There's a reason it's in a cyclical circle movement, because you learn more and then you become even more personalized and responsive in the way that you connect with your donors. And for us at Virtuous, yes, we believe that this is the way forward, but we don't just believe you should take those principles. We have, built a whole platform for this. And so we've built more than just a donor database. Right? A donor database can be sometimes a glorified, digital filing cabinet or, an Excel sheet on steroids or whatever you wanna call it. But for us, we, have built a a responsive fundraising platform. So it's it's a platform that allows whether it's your CRM, marketing, and email, your online giving, giving business intelligence, your automation, all of these things altogether to ultimately create a platform that allows you to connect at scale, to drive generosity, and to ensure you and your organization continue to thrive in this hyper personalized digital first, environment that we all live in. So, I know for us, we really believe in this and believe that this is the way forward. And so we not only have built a platform, but we have so much invested into, developing what that looks like, whether it's embracing AI, whether it's donor insights growing. There's so many things kind of on the horizon. And so I know that's just a brief kinda overview for you, and there's so much more probably you wanna see or questions that you have. And so we do have, our last poll here that I'm gonna open up, which is if you would want a demo of Virtuous where you sit down with our team, where we can answer questions for you and your organization specifically, and really get into some of those, nuances, some of those questions, some of those things that you might say, hey. But how do you handle this? Or what can you do in this situation, or how does this compare here? So we would love to connect with you to be able to have that time, to, you know, walk you through things and really connect personally. Now we do have a lot of q and a, so I wanna jump to that. We're gonna leave this poll up just for a little bit longer, so feel free to fill that out as we keep going. But, Dana Heinrich, can we jump to the q and a? Does that work for you all? Sounds great. Excellent. Let's do this. And, Jean, I see that would love a demo at a board meeting. Awesome. Go ahead and click yes, to the the poll there, and we'll we'll make sure to connect with you. Thank you to those who submitted questions and, selected the upvote on some the highest upvote we got, so I wanna make sure we get to this, is how do you ensure that your team or across departments are using the CRM as a daily go to rather than maybe falling back to old habits like spreadsheets? I can jump in first. It's really that initial step when you're evaluating systems is understanding what the pain points are and that the solution you're moving to may solve those or that you're going to change the processes in a system that can support that. And and and sorry. And and I think to to to add to that, the the inclusion of the of the users of the daily users in in the process of selecting that solution and having that feedback loop on understanding what would the ideal world look like for a fundraiser in your organization and, how how how can we actually, provide that tool to you. And and understanding that a new fundraising platform is not just a business management platform to track business, but it's also a tool for making you individual asset fundraiser more efficient in your daily work. So if I, as a user, get that feeling that this is actually a tool that could help me be better at my job, then I'm I'm, I I'm willing to spend the time on kind of get, get my hands on on that. So I think the the inclusion of the users in the process is is very important, to to get that adoption in the end. That's great. Alright. The next one is this. How do we manage cost while still having access and integration with our other systems like Microsoft three sixty five and our fundraising platform? It's potentially a large operations cost. So, yeah. And and and just to to, to to to kick that off, it, the investment can be relatively high in in chasing your platform, but you're not changing it for changing it. You're changing it for being more efficient and and, and, and, hopefully have a a positive ROI based on some of the, points that we were, discussing here today. I think it's important when you look into a new, platform, fundraising platform, to have an eye on on on your current IT infrastructure, IT environment, seeing, okay, do I have things that becomes obsolete if I choose this platform? Are there other things in my, IT stack that I should be looking at? Not saying that everything should be changed at once, but just pointing out that, obviously, different fundraising platforms have different, features and functionalities. So depending on where you're coming from and depending on on kind of the the the setup you have today, it is worthwhile to kind of have it a more holistic view on on the IT stack. But that would require more in-depth, analysis on on on, on on your current setup. Yeah. Yeah. I agree with that. I would also just add understanding, with those tech stacks where your, like, agreements lie, like, what what the contract lengths are. Also thinking about organizationally, like, what's a good season for you to move? Are there members on your team that have some downtime, and so that they can support a CRM transition? Probably don't wanna be doing it at end of year. Yeah. Yeah. There's some times where that's, that's probably not gonna be on the list. Dana, I'd love if you could take this next one. Does Virtuous have mobile capability? We do have a mobile app, which is good for on the go, major gift officers. They can look up contacts and add notes. It's also great on tablets just in the the web browser as well. Awesome. Alright. What about, this let's see. How do we get integration across multiple points of contact such as website contact forms, donations, registration forms, incoming contacts to team members so that it's easy, to access and becomes a habit for people to add? I think part of this is gonna go back to your evaluation of what system you're you're ultimately looking to transition to, whether they support integrations with the other text the other tools in your tech stack or whether that tool itself will will solve for that need. Website forms, donations. Yep. That's great. Alright. Henrik, can you kinda kick us off on this question? I'm curious your thoughts. How do you build a subject matter expert team for the CRM in a nonprofit where there may not be money to hire a developer or a management team? You know, you you kind of work with your team members and need to form sort of that subject matter expert team. Yeah. So so so first of all, I think a a subject matter expert in in in in this context is not a, an IT developer. It's not an IT, person, but a subject matter expert is someone who's who has, his or her daily job as a fundraiser. Understanding what is it that that I'm, I'm doing in my daily work and how, how can I, optimize that? So obviously, we need that buy in from the team, we need that buy in from the team ensuring, successful adoption. But I think it's important that that it is actually someone who is in the, in in the function of fundraising today that can can give that that feedback. To the point earlier, this is not an IT project. Almost all projects will fail if you consider it as a an IT project only, disregarding any platform out there in the market. So it's really important to select, those individuals in the organization that has maybe an interest or maybe, someone who's, complained or kind of came with suggestions on how to improve for fundraising. Someone who can can actually take some ownership in the organization for for this and spend the right amount of time educating that individual or those individuals, on the platform ensuring that they are the ambassadors that really leads the way for for the organization. So a a function expert, not an IT expert is is is key. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, let me just make sure we don't have any other, questions here. I think we've kinda gotten through, most of them. So any closing thoughts you all would like to share as we wrap up today? Patience, time, communication. Those will we'll see you through it. Absolutely. And and and and I think, I mean, we I think we we covered a lot here. But I mean, understanding that and and, I think, Scott, you you you've said it really well previously, earlier, today. It's it's, status quo is not necessarily the best solution. That can be costly as well. So it's really about understanding how do you, work today, tomorrow, in three years, in five years? And do you have the platform that actually can support your your journey going forward? Yeah. Yeah. I think that's so important. And listen, I just wanna close too by saying we understand the magnitude of, one, the decision, but also the transition. Like I said, so many members of our team have walked through that themselves, sitting in your seat. And so we really understand that. And I think our goal is to come alongside of you, to decide one is this is what's the right way forward? And then how do you navigate that in a way that ultimately you come out on the other end thriving, and your organization is set up for, increasing generosity in in the culture that we live in, digital first hyper personalized, but really having you, be able to set yourself apart in that and connect with your donors personally at scale. So if we can help in any way, we'd love to, throw it in the chat here just one more time. There's a link, where you can get a demo and, really, that starts with a conversation to see, hey. Does this even make sense for you? So, we would love to connect with you. Our team would. And, again, thank you so much for being here. Heinrich, Dana, thank you, both for just sharing your wisdom, sharing your expertise. You all bring so much to the table, and I think that this has been helpful. We will send out the recording as well as a link to get the slide deck. So watch for that. You will, definitely get that sent out by either probably end of day tomorrow, if not today. Again, get that playbook if you haven't. If you missed the link, you can just go on to our website, in the resource tab. Get that for free. We would love for that to hopefully, encourage you and really help your team. But thanks again for being with us. We will connect with you soon, and we'll see you next time. Thanks, everybody. Thanks.